Thursday, December 26, 2013

Bah! Humbug! I Divested Myself From The Culture Of Consumption That Surrounds Christmas

To be honest, Christmas has always inspired more stress than
excitement for me. This is the most relaxed I have ever felt this time of the
year because I've totally divested myself from the culture of consumption that
takes hold when Christmas comes around, which gets masqueraded by Corporate
America as "a time for giving" (which makes sense from their
standpoint, given that for some retailers, holiday shopping accounts for as
much as 20-40 percent of annual sales).

Thinking about the rampant consumerism that takes control of
so many people I know around Christmas time made me think about the following
passage from Guy Debord’s critique of consumer society in his book, Society of
the Spectacle, thesis 42.

"The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has
attained the total occupation of social life. Not only is the relation to the
commodity visible but it is all one sees: the world one sees is its world.
Modern economic production extends its dictatorship extensively and
intensively... In the advanced regions, social space is invaded by a continuous
superimposition of geological layers of commodities. At this point in the
“second industrial revolution,” alienated consumption becomes for the masses a
duty supplementary to alienated production."

In a consumer culture, “shop until you drop” and “spend like
there is no tomorrow” is what we are constantly told to do and are expected to do. We
are what we consume, what we get from others, what we have.

What troubled me most when I celebrated Christmas, and, although
most people claim it should not matter, is the intense pressure to meet the high
expectations friends and love ones have for the type of gift they receive from
us and how we put intense pressure on them to meet our high expectations for
the type of gift we receive from them.

“It’s the thought that counts,” we tell ourselves. Yeah
right! It’s all about the commodity baby. “What did you get” or better yet, “what
did you get me” are the questions I remember being asked the most.

The final data on Christmas spending this season are not out
yet. However, surveys measuring the intentions of consumers to spend this
holiday season suggest that even in the context of a sluggish economy
exhibiting only modest signs of recovery (the benefits of the economic recovery
has skipped over most Americans), and a pervasive sense of uncertainty about
their own financial future, people probably did their usual: shop, spend, shop,
and spend.

The good news first: Christmas spending was projected to be
lower than retailers hope for.

Nonetheless, according to a survey released in mid-November
by the American Research Group, Inc., Americans planned to spend an average of
$801 for gifts this holiday season. The average spending for those who said
they planned to make catalog purchases is $1,166, while the average spending
for those who said they would make their purchases over the Internet is $1,109.
Based on survey
results released in early November by the National Retail Federation, projected
sails for 2013 are expected to be around $602.1 billion.

An eye-popping finding from a second NRF survey
is that an astonishing 63 percent of shoppers said that did not set aside any
savings for holiday gifts they planned to purchase. Break out the credit cards.

Whether you planned for it or not does not matter, because the
pressure to spend is intense during the holiday season. While grabbing a few
items from the grocery store, I stood in line behind a woman buying a gift card
who was complaining that she had to make the purchase because a friend had
brought her a gift and that she felt obligated to buy something for them.

With about 40 percent of consumers beginning their holiday shopping now
before Halloween, Debord description of a consumer culture seems correct, “the
commodity has attained the total occupation of social life.”